The present invention relates to providing services and service outlets to rooms. In particular, the invention relates to providing patient-related services to patient-care rooms, such as are located in hospitals, nursing homes, and other medical facilities requiring that certain services being continuously available for use in connection with patient treatment. For example, a supply of gaseous oxygen and nitrogen, electrical outlets, room lighting, nurse-call intercom, patient monitoring devices and patient convenience facilities are generally required to be available adjacent the patient bed area. It is customary to provide the services directly to the room wall adjacent the patient bed, or to centralize such services at headwall units which mount in the interior of a room against a room wall.
While various attempts have been made to conveniently orient a variety of services for access by a patient or a doctor, nurse or other medical personnel, these attempts have been deficient in one or more aspects and have generally been an unsatisfactory manner of providing patient-care services. Furthermore, past systems for providing patient-care services have generally resulted in dedication of a particular room or location to a specific type of patient care. For example, once a patient room has been configured for general medical-surgical use, with services required for providing the normal level of medical-surgical care being located adjacent the patient bed, it has been difficult and time consuming to convert the orientation and type of patient-care services provided to allow the room or location to be employed for a different level of patient care, e.g., for progressive care, intensive or critical care, recovery or emergency use.
A significant difficulty of past attempts to provide patient-care services has been the inflexibility of the systems. In many instances, patient-care services have been provided at fixed locations. For example, patient-care service outlets have been permanently or fixedly attached in a room wall or in a mounted headwall unit. In such a system, the outlet location cannot be quickly reoriented to adjust to changing patient or hospital needs.
With past attempts to provide fixed patient-care services, if specific patient conditions or special procedures require the addition of, e.g., medical gases, or if it is necessary to relocate patient service outlets or devices to the other side of the patient bed for a particular procedure or procedures, the flexibility necessary to accomplish this is absent. Further, with fixed service outlets, it may not be possible to properly engage secondary devices, e.g., secondary regulators and flow meters, employed in certain procedures in connection with particular patient-care services. In addition, changes in the size and shape of various patient-care service devices employed in typical patient treatment situations will often render the fixed service outlet locations unusable and require major reconstruction of the room wall or of the headwall unit. For example, newer equipment may be physically wider or taller than the original devices replaced, requiring additional spacing between outlets. The fixed outlet will not accept adjacent devices, resulting in the inability to provide the necessary services to the patient.
Even attempts to provide services in a more flexible manner have suffered from serious deficiencies. Most notably, attempts to provide services with movable outlets, typically mounted on a horizontal rail of some design, have required substantial exposure of patient-care service conduit to the room environment. Such exposure subjects both the patient and the medical personnel caring for the patient to increased risk of injury from leaking services and to increased risk of catching the patient bed, attachments to the bed, other patient-care equipment and persons themselves on the exposed service conduit. Service conduit used such past attempts has typically been flexible hose which hangs down, creating a ready trap for the unwary patient or the patient who is not fully oriented and for medical personnel. Exposed service conduit also increases the difficulty of quickly reorienting a particular service outlet or device or a plurality of such outlets or devices mounted on a single rail. Other flexible systems have placed hoses and service outlets in awkward, out of the way locations which are not readily accessible to service and which will not provide a support surface for movable outlets and devices.
No past attempts to provide patient-care services have resulted in a system which is completely flexible and which will permit immediate changes in the required level and extent of patient care. Further, no past systems have provided the flexibility required to incorporate changing levels of patient care as medical technology and research provide new and improved techniques.
It is therefore, an object of the present invention to provide a system for providing services to specific locations with substantially enhanced flexibility.
Another object of the present invention is to provide patient-care services to patient room environments with substantially greater flexibility than in the past.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a service outlet wall which permits positioning and support of at least one service outlet at different locations on the service outlet wall while simultaneously repositioning the service conduits which provide services to the service outlets, while maintaining the service conduits in a concealed and protected condition. A further object of the present invention is to provide a rail system for positioning service outlets in particular locations in a room while simultaneously positioning the service conduits connected to said outlets and while concealing and protecting said service conduits during and after repositioning.